Impact of Learning Styles on Student Blogging Behavior Michael - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Research Lab Educational Technologies Impact of Learning Styles on Student Blogging Behavior Michael Derntl Sabine Graf Faculty of Computer Science School of Computing and University of Vienna Information Systems Austria Athabasca University Canada ICALT 2009 July 16, 2009 – Riga, Latvia

Research Lab Educational Technologies Overview • Some background on – Blogs and their use in education – Learning style models • Empirical study in a CS course on software architecture • Discussion & conclusion ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 2

Research Lab Educational Technologies Blogging in education Established communication medium on the Web Early takeup in education by pioneers, growing number of (case) studies However, “we need to continue to move the dialogue past the novelty of blogs and toward a solid collection of ideas for using them successfully” (West, Wright, Gabbitas & Graham, 2006) ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 3

Research Lab Educational Technologies Blogging in education – use cases Facilitating online collaboration linking, commenting, publishing feedback and reviews  communication among peers and facilitator (e.g. Birney, Barry, & O’Heigeartaigh, 2006) Fostering self directed and exploratory learning through reflective thinking – “reflective logbooks” (Carroll, Calvo, & Markauskaite, 2006) -- research & reflect – self monitoring and evaluation Tracking student progress – documentation and submission of contributions using trackback (Chang & Chen, 2007) – social learning in the group – “joint course blog” (Hammond, 2006) ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 4

Research Lab Educational Technologies Blogging in education – use cases Social network analysis – collaboration patterns in virtual community (Chin & Chignell, 2006) – requires commenting, linking and/or trackback Teamwork support (Luca & McLoughlin, 2005) – reflections, opinions – Insight into attendance, contributions, mutual support ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 5

Research Lab Educational Technologies Learning Styles Complex and partially inconsistent research area – Lot of research in the last 30 years – More than 70 different learning style models -- relationships between models are not clear – Definitions “ a description of the attitudes and behaviours which determine an individual’s preferred way of learning ” (Honey & Mumford, 1992) “ characteristic strengths and preferences in the ways they [learners] take in and process information ” (Felder, 1996) However, learning style literature argues that considering learning styles in education has positive effects on students’ learning.  Is there an impact of students’ learning styles on their blogging behaviour? ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 6

Research Lab Educational Technologies Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model Each learner has a preference on four dimensions Active – Reflective learning by doing – learning by thinking things through group work – work alone Sensing – Intuitive concrete material – abstract material more practical – more innovative and creative patient / not patient with details standard procedures – challenges Visual – Verbal learning from pictures – learning from words Sequential – Global learn in linear steps – learn in large leaps good in using partial knowledge – need “big picture” focus on details – focus on overview ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 7

Research Lab Educational Technologies Felder-Silverman – Dimensions & Scales +11 +9 +7 +5 +3 +1 -1 -3 -5 -7 -9 -11 active reflective Moderate Well balanced Moderate Strong Strong preference preference preference preference  Strong preference but no support  problems Why FSLSM? – Combines major learning style models (Kolb, Pask, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) – New way of combining and describing learning styles – Describes tendencies – Describes learning style in more detail ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 8

Research Lab Educational Technologies Course context “Software architectures and web technologies”, winter 2008 3rd semester undergraduate CS module 2hrs lecture (content delivery) + 2hrs lab (hands-on practice) Focus here: blogging in the lab course blended learning approach weekly meeting: plenum for task discussion, checking assignments, hands-on exercises, presentations, problems, etc online/distant: elaboration of personal assignments, team project tasks Blogging integrated into LMS blogs hosted on Blogger.com LMS module with RSS reader and community features ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 9

Research Lab Educational Technologies ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) July 15, 2009 10

Research Lab Educational Technologies My blog ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 11

Research Lab Educational Technologies Empirical study • Participants – 77 students in 4 groups (61 male, 16 female, mean age 24.5 ) • Method – Start of course: Index of Learning Styles (ILS) questionnaire based on FSLSM (N=74) – Blogging data recorded on the LMS blog portal: • Blog entries from RSS feed • Page visit, go to own blog, instructor‘s blog, or peer‘s blog / entry – Correlation analyses between blogging data and ILS data using Spearman‘s rho and Kendall‘s tau ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 12

Research Lab Educational Technologies Empirical study Research questions: Relationship between students’ learning styles and… – the number of visits of the blog portal – the number of postings to their blogs (write) – the number of visits of their peers’ blogs (read) – reading other blogs vs. posting to own blog (read : write) – average length of blog content – using recent-20-posts list to access blogs – using charts to access blogs ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 13

Research Lab Educational Technologies Distribution of learning styles Distribution in line with previous findings in engineering education (cf Felder & Spurlin, 2005) –11 0 +11 Reflective Active 2.00 3.92 Intuitive Sensing 3.05 5.28 Verbal Visual 4.68 4.30 –.22 ± 4.60 Global Sequential ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 14

Research Lab Educational Technologies Descriptive data • Begin of semester – 70% no prior experience with keeping a blog – 6% had no idea at all • Blogging activities (writing) – 7.5 postings per student ( 6.35) – Avg. length of a blog posting 725 chars ( 579) • Blog portal activities (browsing, reading) – 99 actions per student per semester – 39 views, 38 clicks on recent postings – Limitation: activities on Blogger.com hidden ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 15

Research Lab Educational Technologies Learning styles and blogging behavior: RQ1 RQ1: Using the blog portal – Variable: count of actions on portal page (visit and all clicks) – Correlations: very low, not significant – Good news, no learning style dependencies for using blogs ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 16

Research Lab Educational Technologies Learning styles and blogging behavior: RQ2 RQ2: Writing blog postings – Variable: blog postings – Correlations: Active learners posted more frequently than reflective learners (tau=.18, rho=.26, p<.05) – In line with expectations: active learners tend to be more active communicators ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 17

Research Lab Educational Technologies Learning styles and blogging behavior: RQ3 RQ3: Reading other blogs – Variable: clicks on peer/instructor blog/posting – Correlations: very low, not significant – Students’ interest in other blogs is independent of students’ learning styles ICALT 2009 - Michael Derntl (michael.derntl@univie.ac.at) & Sabine Graf (sabineg@athabascau.ca) July 16, 2009 18